


Bloodsick and Echoes

by kinky digamma (periferal)



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Sex, Singing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-23 20:49:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20219662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/periferal/pseuds/kinky%20digamma
Summary: The night is long, and Nadja is alone.





	Bloodsick and Echoes

Lionsick

The chain of the trick-cane slashed the man’s neck and he went down, his pitchfork clattering on the damp cobble.

“This is the seventeenth death you have suffered at my hands,” the Nadja said faintly into the night. She was a tall, thin woman, with broad hands, a rough voice, glass-blue eyes and dark, curly hair. “Would you only quiet your hounds, this would not be necessary.”

The nearly man-sized mutated beasts lay dead at the man’s feet. This walk of this angle of the dream, they had died cleanly, skulls shot through. It was not always so. Once, she had torn the throat of a dog out with her hands, feeling its blood seep into her mouth. That had not been a good walk of the dream, for she had not gone very far before roving brick-troll bashed her skull.

She sang as she hunted, now, for this was a path where her footsteps rang out and stealth was impossible, for she could only pass this way after many deaths and many cries of maddened Yharmenites.

_Kos washed up on the shores of old._

_Its bab began to weep,_

_For lacking milk and mother’s love,_

_It hunted other meat._

_Poor villagers, they pled and prayed_

_The strangers to depart,_

_Who plucked the eyes of children_

_To seek the dead thing’s heart._

_So, come to me, oh Yharnam, _

_Bring your folly and your knives._

_Though I am not what you hunt for,_

_And you widow all your wives. _

She was new, but she was not ignorant. Gherman had plucked a scholar from the world, but he knew not her parentage, dying as she had been on the streets of the old city.

“Away!” another man with a pitchfork begged. “Away, away.”

She ran his mouth through with her re-formed cane and grabbed his torch from his falling hand. This close, she could see his face. He had been handsome once, before the plague had taken him.

“How I would have used your body,” she told him, and kicked his corpse into the gutter. He would be born again upon her next death; only on her last walk would she bother to be kind. “You had long fingers, I see,” she continued, though she had moved past him. “I would have bid you bruise me on the inside of my arms…”

She let herself be caught up in her imaginings and cried out as a blade pierced her side. A man, this one bearing a board for a shield, screamed in her face. She stumbled backwards, skewered him in the belly, and let his blood seep into her wound, closing it. 

“You,” she said, anger thick in her voice. “You, I would have fed to worms and watched as their mouths consumed you. That would have been the pleasure you gave me.”

She passed into a new place, one she had yet to walk.

The red light from the moon glowed faintly on the distant tomb stones. In the graveyard she saw a blurred shape, stalking to and fro, pausing at times to sniff the air. It was her intention to approach it and investigate, for if he meant to kill her, she could always awaken, but a strange voice stopped her.

“Are you blood-sick, fellow hunter?” it asked.

She turned to see a man on his knees, his once-white shirt soaked through with gore which flecked even his fine, corn-silk hair and the thick lenses of glasses hiding pale red eyes. Despite his weakened state, he gripped a cleaver in his left hand.

“Are you?” she asked. He allowed her to place the point of her cane below his chin.

“No,” he said. “But he is, and I fear he shall kill me.”

“Who is he?” she asked.

“Father Gascoine,” he answered. “He has the blood-sickness that comes to all hunters.”

Nadja remembered her fantasies. The kneeling man had fine, long fingers. She lowered her blade and offered him her free hand to grasp. “I know a safe place,” she said. “One to which you will return, should your fears come true.”

He took the offered hand and stood on shaky legs. Behind him, the figure Nadja now knew to be this Father Gascoine continued his frantic vigil.

“Will you tell me your name, before you take me away?”

“Only if you tell me yours.”

She thought of contracts, agreements signed half-awake, blood injected into her veins and Gherman, watching her.

“Leo Offcomer,” he said.

“Nadja Sangue,” she said. “This shall be strange.” She pressed a Mark into his mouth, holding tightly to his shirt. “Breathe and be courteous to the doll.”

-

“I did not know there could be others, anymore,” the doll said. “Not all at once, alongside one another.” It looked at Nadja curiously. “How did you bring him?”

“I burned a mark in his mouth,” she said.

“What is this place?” Leo asked.

“The Hunter’s dream,” Nadja replied. “What do you think?”

“His shape pleases me,” the doll said. “I would watch you both with pleasure.”

Leo seemed to be studiously ignoring it for the moment.

“You said I could come back from death, if I understand your intimations,” he said. “How is that possible?”

“The night of the Hunt is long for me,” she said. “I have slain one man fifty times, yet each time I pass the street-corner where he sits crouched in wait, I must wrest his pistol from his hands anew.”

Leo backed up a step. “You are not undying,” he said. “You are trapped.” He backed up another step, nearly tripping one of the messenger-less graves. “You have trapped me.”

Nadja smiled. “The night is long and lonely,” she said. She raised her hands. “I was sincere—I did not wish for you to die. We are not trapped as we may seem; time passes, but only when those truly monstrous.” At this she took a step forward, “die.”

She imagined, briefly, pressing her tongue to his throat, but thought perhaps she should allow him to grow used to his new knowledge of the world.

“You will help me kill Gascoine?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“Yes.”

He seemed to finally notice that his shirt was no longer soaked with his own blood. “This place heals you?”

“In a way. I do not quite understand it myself, but it seems as though one is brought back to a beginning of sorts, a self before the wounding. Only the wounds heal, however—the dream will not return lost items, though it will not steal them neither. Now…” She smiled.

“Yes?”

“We hunt! Kneel with me, and pray we leave the dream where we wish, and not before or after!”

-

They rolled into the Dream, Leo half-tackling Nadja into the lamp. There had been a crow, a monstrous, sick crow, too heavy for its wings, too manic to be calmed.

Nadja could feel her blood hum within her, hear Leo’s heart pounding even as the cuts disappeared from his flesh and the smell vanished like smoke. He was on top of her, looking down at her, his mouth open, his eyes dazed.

She wound her fingers in his long, soft hair and kissed him hard enough to bruise, forcing his head down to meet hers.

He gasped in surprise and pulled away, his still-dazed eyes wider now. “Your lips taste like blood,” he said. “Why?”

Nadja’s hands kept his face near hers. “The hunt is long,” she said. “And I am weak-willed.”

She kissed him again, pushing her tongue into his mouth.

“There is a bed.” The doll’s voice made Leo look up, and Nadja noticed his pale face was suddenly flushed with color. Her painted eyes watched their dalliance with fascination. “You may play there.”

Nadja helped Leo up. “Come with me,” she said.

He nodded, and twined his fingers with hers.


End file.
